Linda Ly's Blog, page 12

Cranberry Moscow Mules, Sugared Cranberries, and Holiday Nuts

This post is sponsored by Minted. All words and thoughts are my own.

Christmas and cocktails go hand in hand for my family and me, and it’s always a time of festive drinks and finger foods in between the reunions, the traditional meals, and the present opening.

We like to start the day with mimosas and gin fizzes, move on to a second round of gin fizzes after brunch, and preface dinner with a creative cocktail or two. If it weren’t for my brother-in-law, a mixology aficionado, I probably wou...

Hawaiian-Style Macaroni Salad with Pickled Beets

This post is in partnership with Newell Brands, makers of Ball® Fresh Preserving Products. All thoughts and words are my own.

Over the summer, I was invited to the headquarters of Newell Brands, makers of Ball® Fresh Preserving Products, to learn the history of the iconic jars and to tour the test kitchen, where a team rigorously develops and tests hundreds of canning and preserving recipes for the brand’s site and books.

Part of my role as a Fresh Preserving ambassador is to share the joys...

Make Your Own Insecticidal Soap for Natural Pest Control

I recently moved a number of outdoor plants inside my house for the winter, and all have been doing well for the last few weeks until this week… when I found a colony of tiny pests on the windowsill, on the rim of the pot, and on the stalk of my banana plant.

I had hosed it down, inspected the leaves, and put it in fresh potting soil to prep for overwintering it, but even in the absence of pests to the naked eye, hitchhikers are always a possibility. They lay eggs on the undersides of leaves...

Starting Our Oregon Christmas Tree Tradition

In years past, my husband and I always kicked off the Christmas season with a visit to a Southern California tree farm. Out in the suburbs of Orange County, we wandered past row after row of perfectly pruned pines in 75°F weather while palm trees swayed in the balmy breeze above our heads.

I liked to think it was just as much a novelty for him as it was for me. He grew up going to “real” tree farms in rural Northern California, and my family did what most families did — stop by one of the ma...

DIY Mason Jar Koozie (Plus a Recipe for Vanilla and Bourbon Mulled Cider!)

This post is in partnership with Newell Brands, makers of Ball® Fresh Preserving Products. All thoughts and words are my own.

Being a Fresh Preserving ambassador means I have quite the collection of Ball® Canning Jars in my kitchen (and my pantry, and my garage, and my laundry room)…. so much, in fact, that many of them are used for purposes other than canning and preserving.

If you open the kitchen cabinets, you’ll see plenty of jars alongside our highballs and mugs as I love using them as...

Simple Spice Drawer Organization

My previous kitchen was small, so small that it necessitated the use of vertical space to store my collection of jars (on a shelf suspended above the counter) and spices (on a magnetic board screwed to the side of a cabinet).

I’m in a slightly bigger kitchen now, but have the opposite problem: plenty of drawers and cabinets, but no vertical storage. For someone who keeps over 80 varieties of herbs and spices on hand, it’s an organizational challenge. But I finally came up with a neat, beauti...

Planting My Placenta: An 18-Month Update

If you’ve been following my parenthood posts on this blog, you may remember that after the birth of my daughter last year, I decided to take my placenta home and plant it under a tree. It was actually a container citrus tree, since we didn’t know at the time if we’d stay in California, and we wanted to be able to take the tree with us should we move.

Well, we’ve moved! And we brought the blood orange tree to Oregon with us, where it’s now overwintering in our insulated garage next to a windo...

A Natural and Non-Toxic Mattress From Avocado Green Mattress

This post is in partnership with Avocado Green Mattress. All thoughts and words are my own. Look for a special discount just for Garden Betty readers at the bottom of this post!

In my house, and in life in general, I try to find a balance between being mindful of health, money, and the environment, but also knowing which battles I should pick so I can enjoy every day and not obsess over being “perfect.”

That means I do most of my shopping online but seek out cool local shops for gifts, I don...

Bacon, Chicken, and Green Tomato Soup

If you’re like me, and you’ve been searching for savory recipes for your green, unripe, end-of-season tomatoes that don’t involve frying or pickling, you’ve probably realized they’re few and far between. And it’s no wonder why: In their immature stage, green tomatoes can be bland or bitter, too dry or too dense. On their own, they aren’t exactly culinary delights.

But once you simmer them in a luscious broth with a handful of aromatics and let the heat take the edge off their tartness, green...

Roasted Green Tomato Salsa Verde

Before we moved out of our home in Southern California, we had a long list of garden chores that included clearing out the “weedy” tomatoes that had volunteered freely in our lower yard (weeds that I’m deeply missing as we’re settling into the Central Oregon climate).

We harvested basketfuls of ripe tomatoes before tossing the plants into a big pile to be broken down and taken to our compost heap. I decided to rescue some of the green unripe tomatoes, as it seemed like such a waste to let th...